The Longest Week
For some of us, this is the longest week. The countdown till next Sunday at 6pm seems
unbearable. Life without The Sopranos seems totally absurd (with a nod to JP Sartre). I can't even imagine what it will feel like. I haven't been this addicted to a TV show since I was a kid and for a few weeks I actually thought I was Ben Gazzara on the short-lived NBC series "Run For Your Life."
Delighted I am, then, to have discovered that the Washington Post has got a Scripting the Sopranos blog going. Compared to reading the transcripts of this week's GOP debate/Jesus festival, it makes fascinating copy. I refer to you this entry by WaPO style editor Michael Cavna who lists the Ten Burning Questions he would pose to series poo-bah David Chase:
1. Has Paulie turned traitor? Is Paulie "Pepe Le Pew" Walnuts working both sides of the asbestos-laden river, Mr. Chase, or were you just serving up cinematic red herrings in the previous episode?
2. Have we really seen the last of Melfi? Sure, the doc endured a ripped-out rib eye recipe -- and more profoundly, of course, the mockery of her professional peers -- but is that really enough to prompt her to go cold turkey on Tony? "Departures," indeed.
3. Have we seen the last of Agent Harris? Was Harris's tipping-off to Tony his final plot relevance, or will the feds prove integral in the finale?
4. Must a child die for the sins of the (god-)father? Given so many nods to both William Shakespeare and Mario Puzo, must AJ or Meadow really be sacrificed in the finale?
5. What will be the show's last big water moment? The pool's been drained, the ducks have flown. Bobby, AJ and Paulie (unlike Big Pussy) all escaped potential watery graves this season, but mustn't someone yet sleep with the fishes, if not the mallards?
6. Will we get a cinematic showdown a la "High Noon"? In the penultimate episode, the Tony/Melfi showdown scene opened with the classic Western long-shot -- two lone figures facing off, armed only with verbal darts and unresolved tension. But what spur-chinging Gary Cooper moment will the finale hold?
7. Will Parisi live up to his name and really end up the patsy?
8. Will we see the sudden return of a long-lost character? Wherefore art thou Furio, say, or the "Pine Barrens" fugitive?
9. Would whacking Tony be too, well, cliched?
10. And what will be your last classic-rock track? The Stones? Floyd? Doors? Mott the Hoople? In its own way, this is almost as tantalizing a question as finding out who'll be rubbed out next.
My answer to these queries? Hell if I know! Though I have been saying to some friends that we're gonna have to keep our eyes on Paulie next week. He's always yearned to join the NY crew and whacking Tony seems an express ticket.
And your thoughts?
UPDATE: David Corn officially endorses the Paulie theory.
June 6th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
My nomination for classic rock track (perhaps for the beginning of the show) would be 21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson.
The feds don’t want one side or the other to get completed wiped out, so I predict they save Tony’s bacon in return for forfeiture of pretty much everything and the witness protection program.
Tony will love Missoula.
June 6th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I’ve never, in my life, been so emotionally involved with TV characters. In terms of - caring about them - there are few filmmakers- Fassbinder maybe, Scorsese at his best - that can do the same thing…
Questions?
1. Even odds. Hints have been dropped…why was food ordered at the house? Paulie’s
comment about time off and riding out the Columbo war…but then it seems too obvious. Even odds.
2. I think that abrupt closure is it.
3. Even odds…I think Harrsi may be playing Tony to exploit his vulnerabilities for a big catch.
4. Likely. I think it will be Meadow, at Patsy’s son’s place.
5. Ducks again maybe…
6. Likely…
7. That would be too cute by half, but they could pull it off.
8. Probably not - excpet Junior of course. A major guest performance is rumored though.
9. Tony will not be whacked. In fact, my strongest instict is that the show will end with the Soprano crew intact after heavy losses are inflicted. I think Phil is dead though…
10. Something obscure by someone big…”Don’t be Denied” by neil young ..
June 6th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
The show is a vile glamorization of thuggery.
The Sopranos is as disgraceful as gangster rap or the other giant shit of a show, 24.
No wonder Bush is president, we love out thugs.
June 6th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Josh Legere is a provocateur who has never been emotionally involved with anything that the masses could possibly enjoy. He’s above all that, thinking the aesthetic products he consumes are more “authentic.”
June 6th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Good guesses, Cummings.
Josh: Whoa, couldnt disagree more on this one. What makes the Sopranos so absolutely wonderful is the moral symmetry. The thugs in it are really really hateful. But so is just about everyone else– from the local priest, to the elected pol, to the on-the-pd community leaders. Just like real life.
June 6th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
The Department of Defense has identified 3,485 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans this week:
AKIN, James C., 23, Sgt., Army; Albuquerque, N.M.; Second Infantry Division.
BALMER, Ryan A., 33, Tech Sgt., Air Force; Mishawaka, Ind.; Office of Special Investigations.
CHRISTOPHER, Caleb P., 25, Sgt., Army; Chandler, Ariz.; First Cavalry Division.
COSTELLO, Jeremiah D., 22, Specialist, Army; Carlinville, Ill.; First Cavalry Division.
GAGARIN, Greg P., 38, Staff Sgt., Army; Los Angeles; Second Infantry Division.
KRITZ, Tyler J., 21, Sgt., Army; Eagle River, Wis.; Second Infantry Division.
KUGLICS, Matthew J., 25, Staff Sgt., Air Force; North Canton, Ohio; Office of Special Investigations.
NEPSA, Keith V., 21, Specialist, Army; New Philadelphia, Ohio; First Cavalry Division.
SURBER, Robert A., 24, Sgt., Army; Inverness, Fla.; Second Infantry Division.
June 6th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
I have not seen any of the final season episodes, and have to wait to rent the DVDs. But Meadow will not be killed; too “Godfather III.” I like to see that strange family from Rhode Island
come back; from the aborted plan to take out Johny Sac.
The final song will be “Last Of The Blacksmiths”, from The
Band’s ill fated “Cahoots” album. I have no reason to believe this
will be so; but if it happens I demand Marc Cooper contribute
5,000 to the Hillary Clinton Campaign.
June 7th, 2007 at 1:25 am
Nothing obscure for the last classic rock track:
Sympathy for the devil, or Gimme Shelter.
June 7th, 2007 at 1:29 am
What’s the best Sopranos line ever?
My vote goes to Christopher:
“Don’t disrespect the pizza parlor.”
June 7th, 2007 at 1:31 am
The acting, dialogue, cinematography and music on the Sopranos are all first-rate cinema quality. But the concept and it’s execution marry the worst of soap opera melodrama and Mafia glam pics.
Tony Soprano hateful? Relative to whom? He’s a kind man at heart, we are reminded in the schmaltziest ways, e.g. the duck fetish, his mom complex, his therapy. If it were laid on any thicker, he’d have to be a cartoon.
Admittedly, I could only stand to watch the first season and that was just on momentum because someone had lent me the DVD set.
Tony’s depradations are invariably justified. When he wacks a snitch, the guy turns out to have been pushing heroin to kids.
And oh, did I mention, Tony loves his mother, dearly, however hard that might be for any human being, and dotes on his children, as any truly loving father would.
When he talks about torturing a guy with a pair of pliers, it’s played as slapstick, and, surprise, surprise–the victim’s a wife-beater or something…The guy he runs down in his car–a sniveling deadbeat. Tony NEVER whacks handsome, charming people…
Sorry, but Sopranos would never work as a drama without a sympathetic protagonist.
Josh exaggerates the thug-glam element, but he does have a point. Tony’s a hero to a lot of macho-insecure viewers, though most, I suspect, find him merely tolerable as a quasi-moral figure in a profoundly immoral world.
June 7th, 2007 at 5:19 am
Meadow’s fate seems to be an item that is generating a great deal of speculation around the web. I don’t watch the Sopranos because I really can’t deal with that level of gratuitous violence. (Apparently, my amygdala was permanently reset to ‘freak out’ by Psycho and Wait Until Dark.) I’ve read a number of ‘Meadow’ deconstructions. Her place in the show must feel anomalous somehow. I’ll be curious to discover what happens… after the fact.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Basing your view of the Sopranos on the first season doesn’t do justice as do why fans of it are so obsessed- these are OBVIOUSLY both sympathetic and horrifying characters - taht we’ve known for something like 50-60 hours - and as wel ldeveloped characters, not cut outs, and far more like cinema than television characters. The show has developed styllistically a lot since the first season. It is is comic in different ways, and less sort of caper-like. Less Goodfellas, more Once upon a Time in America - or as we see now, the Wild Bunch.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:49 am
Okay, breaking news, Paris Hilton gets out of jail after only three days? Outrageous, and not just because her parents had the gall to name her after one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:55 am
In her defense, Paris Hilton is still considered in custody and has been fitted with an ankle monitor to keep her confined at home, and her time to serve has been set back up to the original forty-five days. It’s not like she’s a member of the Mafia and gets off with a hung jury.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Woody, you know damn well she will turn that ankle monitor into a fashion accessory. Everyone will be wearing them.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Okay, apparently one reason she got out early was because of “medical reasons,” she was refusing to eat prison food. You hear that, prisoners? A get out of jail free card to anyone who goes on hunger strike.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:47 am
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/06/06/mclemee
June 7th, 2007 at 8:49 am
In other news, Brazil’s PT, Lula’s party, supports Chavez
http://english.eluniversal.com/2007/06/05/en_pol_art_lulas-party-advocat_05A880037.shtml
June 7th, 2007 at 9:15 am
You’re OT, jcummings, we’re talking about Paris Hilton!
June 7th, 2007 at 9:18 am
I don’t think I’ve ever stayed there. When I was in Paris I stayed in hostels and squats.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:24 am
I don’t see a smiley face, jcummings, either your sense of humor is very subtle (and clever) or you are so committed to the struggle you don’t know who Paris Hilton is…
June 7th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Or, alternatively, people who use smiley faces know they are not really funny and have to use a laugh track.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Paris Hilton does a walk-on for the Sopranos and takes over the family and they all dies of syphillis.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:39 am
What is really remarkable about the last episode of the “Sopranos” is the fact that relatively few people will see it. Oh, I’m sure that it will set a record for HBO viewership but it will be dwarfed by the numbers that tuned in for the finale of “M*A*S*H” or watched the episode of “Dallas” that answered the question that TIME put on its cover: “Who Shot JR?” Those were transcendent cultural events that were fodder for water coolers all over the country.
We can list others:
“Roots”
Finale of “The Fugitive”
Lucy’s baby
But nothing like that today for any fictional series. Even the last “Cheers” or “Seinfeld” didn’t come close. That is how fragmented our “Mass Media” has become. Today the programming is all niche - “Top” Shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” or “American Idol” (which may come closer than any other program to be a big conversation piece the next day) have ratings that, as recently as 1980 would have made them borderline candidates for renewal.
The only truly large audience shows today are in sports - The Super Bowl - that get mega ratings. And that explain the absurd right’s fees the networks pay.
Otherwise everyone has their own special interest group. I’ll bet that the people who loved “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” (and I’ve seen two collections of serious academic writing on that show and its cultural matrix) were just as enthralled as to what the fates of Buffy, Xander, Spike and the others would be at the Hell Mouth as people here are about Tony, Paulie and AJ.
And that makes one wonder if the notions of McCluhan are still valid. Do they even teach him anymore in Communications Seminars? And what does it mean when a society no longer has an “Electronic Hearth” around which the tribe gathers to hear the tellers of tales spin the mythology of that culture?
June 7th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Well MB, Today Paris, Tommorrow Mumia!
June 7th, 2007 at 9:43 am
rlo, you are watching entirely too much TV.
As for Paris and Mumia: Maybe if they had kept her in for the whole stretch she would have come out an advocate for prisoners’ rights. No chance of that now.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:52 am
FyI MB “Buffy” has been taken up by many Women’s Studies Departments as an important cultural artifact.
And, I’ve got to tell you, more than a few Italian-American Group really hate Tony and the gang. Saw an impressive panel on CSPAN four or five years ago that compared it to “Amos ‘n Andy.”
How will it end? My money is with David Corn.
Tony gets a job in Dick Cheney’s office replacing “Scooter” Libby.
June 7th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Bunk, As the late Ellen Willis argued (in maybe the only worthwhile think piece on the Show) the Soprano’s cuts deeper than you are giving it credit for. And with a pretty amazing consistency, the show got deeper as it went on; the charactors got more horrible… and ever more credible.
If I have a moral problem with the show, it’s that it’s probably unfair to the Cops, who were portrayed as heartless and stupid as the hoods at their worst. I like to think the Feds wouldn’t have sent Adriana back to meet her inevitable end.
June 7th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Ok problems I’m having with the Sopranos — UNRESOLVED ISSUES
1. What about tony’s compulsive gambling?
2. What about the blowout with Carmela over the “spec house” that plot went nowhere! Remember tony was all “thats my money” and carmela was like “Hell na, its my money!”
3. Really no more fall out from Adrianna?
4. Who the fuck did Silvio kill last episode?
5. Why was Bobby only in two episodes, when the season was kicked off with the conflict between him and tony? What about the guy he killed?
6. Really? Christopher is dead and now thats it with him? Booo
7. Johnny Sack’s broken family?
8. I WANT MORE JANICE
9. Uncle Junior, he’s just going to rot away in a state run nursing home? What about crazy asian guy? Or as I call him Crasian.
You know that I have loved every minute of this season (except the melfi break up scene, far too contrived) but I really feel that the writers had some great ideas but shitty follow through.
But more importantly…
WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO WITHOUT THIS SHOW?!
June 7th, 2007 at 10:57 am
I don’t get HBO. I’ve watched the 1st 5 seasons on DVD and now you guys are ruining all the supsense.
This is the one show (on DVD) which brought our whole family together around the TV, which I guess I should now call our ‘electronic hearth’. The show grew on us and quickly became a family obsession. After awhile we planned our lives around it, buzzing though mulitple episodes a night, going to sleep bleary-eyed and semi-intoxicated.
On Father’s Day last year at my request we did a Sopranos family drive, touring the mobbed-up neighborhoods featured on the show (we live in north Jersey). We stopped to hike around the Paterson Falls where Hesh always liked to come and think; we looked at the pounding water through his soulful, brooding eyes. We even made a stop at William Carlos Williams’ old house and took a peek inside, figuring that he may well have tended to the Soprano family’s wounds if they’d been around in his day, or he in theirs. A shaky theory maybe but we were under the influence and not thinking clearly.
Now, just as I’ve managed to pull myself out of this mania, in a great effort of will and self-abnegation (only occasionally sneaking a furtive glance at the re-runs on FX) you guys come along and start revealing all this stuff, dropping all these clues and predictions — and pull me back in.
June 7th, 2007 at 11:06 am
The last episode will have everyone arrested, convicted, and let out of jail wearing ankle monitors.
June 7th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Cummings: Good. I am more than happy not to care about Paris Hilton.
Mr. Cooper: That is the same line of argument Russell Simons makes about gangster rap.
It is a shame that so many smart people cannot see through the show. The mass of fans do not take from the show what you all do. Look, Scarface is a fucking video game now. That is where this goes. Soon the Sopranos will be alongside Grand Theft Auto. This is all venomous. This has nothing to do with “the people.†This is about the culture industry exploiting our worst instincts.
The Sopranos is not even realistic.
Maybe the world is filled with thugs, but it is not a good thing thus I do not want to celebrate it. Maybe we can spend more time focusing on real life thugs and let our entertainment actually speak to our possibilities.
June 7th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
“FyI MB “Buffy†has been taken up by many Women’s Studies Departments as an important cultural artifact.”–rlo
Is this kind of like Madonna Studies? Empowerment and all that?
June 7th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
“But more importantly…
WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO WITHOUT THIS SHOW?!”
Wait around for the Deadwood two-part finale…(IMHO Deadwood was a far more interesting show and a grander metaphor than the Sopranos, but this is all just bullshit about one’s taste. There are people who swear by Big Love, which I found unwatchable. I loved the weird Deadwood language - got kind of tired of the easily-parodied goomba-speak on Sopranos.)
I’m probably one of the few here who doesn’t grieve the Sopranos at all - I think it went on too long and didn’t watch every season, although I’ve been enjoying it again - but I am seriously pissed that Deadwood didn’t go for at least three full seasons. For Milch to abandon Al Swearingen for some sucky surfers was criminal - he should be clapped in ankle bracelets.
If anybody hasn’t been checking out the great stuff on FX - i.e. Rescue Me and The Shield - catch up on the DVDs. They’ll help fill any Sopranos junkies’ sense of loss.
Note to Josh - the mass of fans didn’t take from Shakespeare the same thing that Harold Bloom does. They just dug the stories about tormented, crazy and violent people. Nor was he “realistic”. Not even close.
June 7th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
My prediction for the final scene: Tony gets hit in the head with an errant golf ball and wakes up next to Suzanne Pleshette: “Honey, I had the STRANGEST dream…”
June 7th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
What is your aesthetic taste, M. Legere?
June 7th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Note to Josh - the mass of fans didn’t take from Shakespeare the same thing that Harold Bloom does. They just dug the stories about tormented, crazy and violent people…
So is the “greatest story ever told,” the old testament. Sex and death and its extensions are the raw material of all great art.
June 7th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
The guy who Silvio killed was Burt Gervasi, who’s been a minor player, on a few times. I think he may have been the guy made at the same time as Christopher.
June 7th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
FOR ALL YOU MORALISTS: SHAKESPEARE CONTAINS MUCH MORE VILLAINY, GORE, PATRICIDE, MATRICIDE, FRATRICIDE AND PUPPYCIDE ( I KNOW ITS CANNICIDE, BUT WHO ELSE DOES?) THAN THE MOB STORY.
SOPRANOS IS A CLASSIC MORALITY PLAY NOT UNLIKE THE GODFATHER, CITIZEN CANE AND GIANT. ITS NOT A NEW GENRE NOR A NEW WRINKLE…JUST A GREAT MORALITY YARN, WELL TOLD, WELL ACTED AND WELL RECEIVED. FINITO!
June 7th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
If you are so down with the people’s tastes, why don’t you start reading the Left Alone books? Maybe join the NRA? American Idol? 24? Give some money to TNN. These are all examples of things that the “people” are into.
The culture industry is driven by cumulative advantage. The “people” like what they like. Things are big because they are big. No science or rhyme or reason. DUMB LUCK. The “peoples” tastes are not innate or something. They like what they are fed. Don’t be confused about that. If they are fed good things, they might make better choices politically.
I really do loath populism. Just because I have leftist political sympathies, does not mean that I have to pretend to like shitty culture that the “people” like. Nor is it the case that if I do not like shitty culture it is because I think I am superior or authentic. Nor do I need to romanticize the old wine in new bottles.
This debate is kind of silly. We should be talking about the thugs meeting up at G8 summit right now.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
This is possibly heresy for those who can’t get enough of it, but I think The Sopranos is a case where success has worked against art. The series as originally conceived was structured so three seasons would be ideal: The first season introduced the characters and the milieu, the second season fully explored its moral dimensions, and the third should have shown how it all falls apart. Tony Soprano is presented initially as somebody who “solves” his problems by avoiding them. When he has a conflict with Uncle Junior about performing a murder in his favorite restaurant he burns down the restaurant. When he has another conflict with Uncle Junior about who’s going to run the family he pretends Junior is the boss while actually running it himself. When he feels he has to kill a colleague he tells everyone that the victim has gone into Witness Protection. What the third and final season should have been about was what happened when these evasions start coming back to haunt him. Instead the series has spent years spinning its wheels and squandering its force. For a while it was beginning to look like Celebrity Guest Gangster of the Week (Joe Pantolione, Robert Loggia, Steve Buscemi . . .). It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the added seasons, or that I didn’t follow it all the way, but this final stretch really seems to me more like anticlimax than apocalypse.
I always imagined the last scene of the series taking place at the Bada Bing. It’s the same situation, the same personalities, the same thing going on – except they’re all speaking Russian.
And let’s have a little sympathy for James Gandolfini, who sacrificed his career as an actor for this role. Like Basil Rathbone and Sherlock Holmes, he’s stuck with the character and nobody will see him as anything else again.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Hank! LOL
June 7th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?
By DUNCAN J. WATTS
As anyone who follows the business of culture is aware, the profits of cultural industries depend disproportionately on the occasional outsize success — a blockbuster movie, a best-selling book or a superstar artist — to offset the many investments that fail dismally. What may be less clear to casual observers is why professional editors, studio executives and talent managers, many of whom have a lifetime of experience in their businesses, are so bad at predicting which of their many potential projects will make it big. How could it be that industry executives rejected, passed over or even disparaged smash hits like “Star Wars,†“Harry Potter†and the Beatles, even as many of their most confident bets turned out to be flops? It may be true, in other words, that “nobody knows anything,†as the screenwriter William Goldman once said about Hollywood. But why? Of course, the experts may simply not be as smart as they would like us to believe. Recent research, however, suggests that reliable hit prediction is impossible no matter how much you know — a result that has implications not only for our understanding of best-seller lists but for business and politics as well.
Conventional marketing wisdom holds that predicting success in cultural markets is mostly a matter of anticipating the preferences of the millions of individual people who participate in them. From this common-sense observation, it follows that if the experts could only figure out what it was about, say, the music, songwriting and packaging of Norah Jones that appealed to so many fans, they ought to be able to replicate it at will. And indeed that’s pretty much what they try to do. That they fail so frequently implies either that they aren’t studying their own successes carefully enough or that they are not paying sufficiently close attention to the changing preferences of their audience.
The common-sense view, however, makes a big assumption: that when people make decisions about what they like, they do so independently of one another. But people almost never make decisions independently — in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the “best†of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing.
There’s nothing wrong with these tendencies. Ultimately, we’re all social beings, and without one another to rely on, life would be not only intolerable but meaningless. Yet our mutual dependence has unexpected consequences, one of which is that if people do not make decisions independently — if even in part they like things because other people like them — then predicting hits is not only difficult but actually impossible, no matter how much you know about individual tastes.
The reason is that when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called “cumulative advantage,†or the “rich get richer†effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors — a phenomenon that is similar in some ways to the famous “butterfly effect†from chaos theory. Thus, if history were to be somehow rerun many times, seemingly identical universes with the same set of competitors and the same overall market tastes would quickly generate different winners: Madonna would have been popular in this world, but in some other version of history, she would be a nobody, and someone we have never heard of would be in her place.
Because it’s not possible in the real world to test theories about events that never happened, most of what we know about cumulative advantage has been worked out using mathematical models and computer simulations — an approach that is often criticized for glossing over the richness of real human behavior. Fortunately, the explosive growth of the Internet has made it possible to study human activity in a controlled manner for thousands or even millions of people at the same time. Recently, my collaborators, Matthew Salganik and Peter Dodds, and I conducted just such a Web-based experiment. In our study, published last year in Science, more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants. This second group — in what we called the “social influence†condition — was further split into eight parallel “worlds†such that participants could see the prior downloads of people only in their own world. We didn’t manipulate any of these rankings — all the artists in all the worlds started out identically, with zero downloads — but because the different worlds were kept separate, they subsequently evolved independently of one another.
This setup let us test the possibility of prediction in two very direct ways. First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions — that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs — the “best†ones — should become hits in all social-influence worlds.
What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.
So does a listener’s own independent reaction to a song count for anything? In fact, intrinsic “quality,†which we measured in terms of a song’s popularity in the independent condition, did help to explain success in the social-influence condition. When we added up downloads across all eight social-influence worlds, “good†songs had higher market share, on average, than “bad†ones. But the impact of a listener’s own reactions is easily overwhelmed by his or her reactions to others. The song “Lockdown,†by 52metro, for example, ranked 26th out of 48 in quality; yet it was the No. 1 song in one social-influence world, and 40th in another. Overall, a song in the Top 5 in terms of quality had only a 50 percent chance of finishing in the Top 5 of success.
In our artificial market, therefore, social influence played as large a role in determining the market share of successful songs as differences in quality. It’s a simple result to state, but it has a surprisingly deep consequence. Because the long-run success of a song depends so sensitively on the decisions of a few early-arriving individuals, whose choices are subsequently amplified and eventually locked in by the cumulative-advantage process, and because the particular individuals who play this important role are chosen randomly and may make different decisions from one moment to the next, the resulting unpredictably is inherent to the nature of the market. It cannot be eliminated either by accumulating more information — about people or songs — or by developing fancier prediction algorithms, any more than you can repeatedly roll sixes no matter how carefully you try to throw the die.
This, obviously, presents challenges for producers and publishers — but it also has a more general significance for our understanding of how cultural markets work. Even if you think most people are tasteless or ignorant, it’s natural to believe that successful songs, movies, books and artists are somehow “better,†at least in the democratic sense of a competitive market, than their unsuccessful counterparts, that Norah Jones and Madonna deserve to be as successful as they are if only because “that’s what the market wanted.†What our results suggest, however, is that because what people like depends on what they think other people like, what the market “wants†at any point in time can depend very sensitively on its own history: there is no sense in which it simply “reveals†what people wanted all along. In such a world, in fact, the question “Why did X succeed?†may not have any better answer than the one given by the publisher of Lynne Truss’s surprise best seller, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves,†who, when asked to explain its success, replied that “it sold well because lots of people bought it.â€
This lesson is not limited to cultural products either. Economists like Brian Arthur and Paul David have long argued that similar mechanisms affect the competition between technologies (like operating systems or fax machines) that display what are called “network effects,†meaning that the attractiveness of a technology increases with the number of people using it. But even in markets that don’t exhibit obvious network effects (like markets for low-carb or organically produced food, fuel-efficient vehicles or alternative energy technologies), sudden shifts in consumer demand can still arise, persist and then shift again. These shifts often come as surprises but are soon explained away as mere reflections of changing public sentiments. Yet while in some sense these markets do reflect what people want, that is true only of what they want right now. If markets not only reveal our preferences but also modify them, then the relation between what we want now and what we wanted before — or what we will want in the future — becomes deeply ambiguous.
Our desire to believe in an orderly universe leads us to interpret the uncertainty we feel about the future as nothing but a consequence of our current state of ignorance, to be dispelled by greater knowledge or better analysis. But even a modest amount of randomness can play havoc with our intuitions. Because it is always possible, after the fact, to come up with a story about why things worked out the way they did — that the first “Harry Potter†really was a brilliant book, even if the eight publishers who rejected it didn’t know that at the time — our belief in determinism is rarely shaken, no matter how often we are surprised. But just because we now know that something happened doesn’t imply that we could have known it was going to happen at the time, even in principle, because at the time, it wasn’t necessarily going to happen at all.
That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to anticipate the future, any more than we should stop trying to make sense of the past. But it does mean that we should treat both the predictions and the explanations we are served — whether about the next hit single, the next great company or even the next war — with the skepticism they deserve.
Duncan J. Watts is a professor of sociology at Columbia University and the author of “Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age.â€
June 7th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I would like to see Carmella and Janice get wacked. Janice is like Lady Macbeth and Carmella is a hypocrite of the rankest type: she gets on her moral high horse, but has no qualms about living her grand lifestyle from the proceeds of Tony’s criminal enterprises.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Josh
Your theorizing your distaste towards pop culture is as odious as the extremes you criticize. Your selection of that essay - interesting - is simpoly showoffy, designed to separate you from the pack of those troglodytes who enjoy the Sopranos - and Justin Timberlake - not my cup of tea but a fine pop singer who wrote an early antiwar song…incidently I went to a repertory cinema the other day and saw the recent indie noir Alpha Dog. Timberlake can act…not unlike Sinatra.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I’m not talking about “the people’s” taste - in fact Sopranos as RLC points out - has a very small audience.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
I have been talking - actaully talking - not on the internets - with my comrades outside the G8. An interesting scene..could this be the return of the global justice movement?
I also like the Sopranos.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Holy shit, Josh. Like I’m gonna read that. You make ME feel succinct.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Actually, Marc, as you know, I am Jack Bauer.
Plus, I really like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
So, uh, The Sopranos. Since I really dislike Paulie, I’m not too happy that he’s the last of the main guys left in Tony’s family. I really like Bobby Bacala. Christopher, I liked on and off. But when he killed the writer, it was clear that he morally irredeemable …
Tony, from his point of view, was correct in deciding to kill Christopher. His self-absorption and penchant for screwing up had become an incredible liability.
Of course, Christopher wasn’t as self-absorbed as Paulie. Notice how Paulie’s reactions are all about him. At least at first. After Christopher died, Paulie had a lot of remorse about how they’d last parted, “me busting his balls about money.”
I think he’s definitely playing around with New York. But he’s also a sentimentalist. His Aunt Ma’s gone, he’s not exactly a ladies man, he doesn’t get enough pleasure from money for that to drive everything.
Tony’s the closet thing he has to a best friend. He won’t kill Tony.
In fact, Tony won’t die.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
What’s the best Sopranos line ever?
Although Tony Blundetto was one of the more boring characters in that show’s history (though Buschemi is a favorite actor of mine), he had some moments…
ER DOCTOR: “Are you a doctor?”
TONY BLUNDETTO: “No, I’m a Pre-Board Certified Massage Therapist.”
June 7th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Andrew,
Surprisingly, you are not the only one who has theorized that everything in the Sopranos is a dream. The (awful) 80’s series “Dallas” tried that, and even that show’s brainless fan base were wise enough to cry “bullshit” to that. I can’t see a talented guy like David Chase sinking down to that level of disrespect for his audience.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
“I think he may have been the guy made at the same time as Christopher.”
Bert? Wasn’t the guy being made along with Christopher actually Eugene Pontacorvo?
June 7th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Best Sopranos line. Dunno.
But David Remnick quoted a good one in his New Yorker adieu -
Melfi: Hope comes in many forms.
Tony: Well, who’s got the time for that ?
June 7th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
David I don’t think they will use the dream scenario - either Newhart or Dallas - and the “Family Guy” already used the “Dallas” routine. I think there is a rule of one do over.
MB I’ll leave Madonna Studies to Camile Paglia.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
And I must dissent on “Dallas”. It was more than a guilty pleasure. The Ewing saga was high Trash art and you don’t get more engrossing than that!
June 7th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Reg… Al Swearengen is the ONLY tv charcater I love more than Tony. Deadwood is brilliant. And indeed much more literate and significant than The Sopranos and almost as much fun.
The really bad news: the planned 2 part sequel of Deadwood has been scrapped. Aint gonna happen. A major tragedy.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
The Sopranos is definitely the best show on television, and I will miss it. Nevertheless, it has for a while lost its zing. While it is still the greatest thing on television, I am happy that it will end with that distinction…and not be dragged on.
As for Marc’s questions (I have not yet read in detail what others have stated):
1. Doubt it. Tony Sirico made it a part of his initial contract that he “not ever become a rat”, and I don’t think that Chase will make Sirico’s character a double crosser, either. We’ve been given signs of otherwise, but it’s too easy to think that.
2. I say yes, Melfi is gone from Tony’s life. We might see her in a non-Tony setting in the last episode, perhaps.
3. Dunno, but I have a feeling that Cummings is on to something.
4. Highly skeptical that a Soprano child will be offed. Any Sopranos “reunion movie” (and you know there will be one, cha ching) make it doubtful.
5. I seriously don’t know, but it won’t involve the Stugots.
6. There will definitely be a high noon moment, bank it.
7. I have a feeling that he will be killed off.
8. NO. And Chase will lose some respect if he tries this standard television gimmick.
9. Tony lives.
10. Good question. I am going to say that Chase repeats himself from Season 2 (or 1?) and uses You Can’t Wrap Your Arms Around a Dream, by Johnny Thunders.
June 7th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
No two part finale for Deadwood? That’s awful to hear. It was bad enough when the series was abruptly cancelled (coming on the heels of the Six Feet Under canning).
June 7th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Okay. Guy who lurks and rarely posts here. Can we hear some love for the ACTUAL best show on television (though it comes around too rarely for my liking - took TWO YEARS for it to come around this last season) - yup, you got it right - “The Wire”. Can I get an “Amen”?
June 7th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Cummings.
If it is extreme than so be it. It is not like your views on a number of issues (including your defense of phony-revolutionary-but-in-reality-just-typical-dictators) are moderate. I do not have to moderate things in order to go along. For a radical, your criticism is rather pedestrian. You sound like a liberal hack to argues that we have to try and understand the religious right. I do not have to tolerate the religious right and I can also loath cultural products. Nor do I have to pretend like the content isn’t stupid and that the audiences have agency. If you choose to be a fan of a pop star or reality TV, in the name of the revolution so be it. I think that is a bullshit cop out for a boastful radical like yourself.
Look, right wing insurgency seems to run parallel to the post war pop culture explosion. I can’t blame the baby boomers on this site for buying into the Sopranos. They are the pop culture generation. Justin has the tenth of the fame that The Dave Clarke 5 did. 100,000 showed up at Kennedy when they arrived in the US. No star could attract that these days. Pop culture of all kinds has been on a decline for a number of years. Sales of entertainment are declining. As the boomers die off, hopefully the truly odious products of the culture industry will die as well.
Not sure about showing off. This is a rather unhip obscure theory. Certainly not “critical theory” or “poststructuralist.” That would be showing off. Since you are always dropping your obscure Marxist garb, you might be projecting a bit.
If you go on to read the study that the author also published in Science, you will find that he uses fairly basic methodology to prove his point. It is really an underappreciated study, mostly because it undermines so much silly thinking by poseurs like you. Nor would anyone with an audience want to acknowledge it because it would undermine their own ego.
June 7th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I’m with Randy on 21 C S M.
Having dropped DirecTV when I moved from L.A., I still have the last two seasons to look forward to.
Can’t wait.
June 7th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Oh, and my favorite line will always be “it’s gonna be a while before I eat anything from Soriano’s”.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
“but I really feel that the writers had some great ideas but shitty follow through.”
Natasha, that’s a beautiful line, and somehow I feel this just underlines the true genius of the show: we might as well each put that quote as a subtitle on our headstones when we’re six feet under (another superb show that’s gone and left us…*sigh*). In other words, how could it be any other way? Isn’t that how life ends for everyone, with non sequiturs and red herrings and unfinished business? I’m glad as hell that Sopranos will end with a million untied ends, messy and unkempt, because, shit, anything else is just not real. Just not human.
Of course, come next Sunday, some things will indeed be resolved, and they will haunt us for a long, long time afterward.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
“The really bad news: the planned 2 part sequel of Deadwood has been scrapped. Aint gonna happen. A major tragedy.”
I had a really crappy day - system crashes, blah, blah. One of the worst. Now you hit me with this ? I’m totally despondent. Milch deserves to go down with Tony. His new surfer show is getting super shitty reviews - premieres after Sopranos finale, which is about the worst spot I can imagine a new series debuting, especially if it’s an acquired taste, which this looks like at best. Who the hell will want to watch some damned surfers after whatever it is Chase has in store for Tony’s bunch ? With any luck this new show will be so badly recieved that Milch will have to make the Deadwood movies just to be able to show his face anywhere in the known world again.
And “amen” for the Wire…an amazing show that was often painful to watch. Rarely succumbed to romanticization over it’s stark, gritty take on reality.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Of course, Deadwood had 3 full seasons, contra my earlier complaint, but it needed a fourth - or at least the four-hour finale - to give the story more closure.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Samuel-
I hear what you’re saying. But I don’t find that unresolved conflicts make for very good TV drama. The writers are CLEARLY capable enough to tie p the lose ends. But that doesn’t mean that I am calling for things to end neatly, ambiguously is generally always better. ..
Like the end of The Third Man, what better ending could there have possibly been? So genius.
Anyways…Deadwood DVDs for now.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
My brother-in-law lives in Belleville and used to live in Kearny. It’s always interesting to see those neighborhoods on the show. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked by the location for Satriale’s Pork Store.
Here’s another wacky thought: Tony lays low for a while and the newly impoverished Uncle Junior qualifies for a study on stem cells that Janice enrolls him in. He regains his lucidity, saves the family from Phil and then retires, handing it off to Meadow. How crazy would that be?
Who’s the c%^$sucker who put the kibosh on Deadwood?
My favorite line of Swearingen’s:
Yeah. Strange, huh, Miles, but – something ya gotta know about specialists – they pay a premium, and they never cause fuckin’ trouble. Sometimes I imagine in my declining years runnin’ a small joint in Manchester, England, catering to specialists exclusive. And to let ‘em know they’re amongst their own, maybe I’ll operate from the corner, hanging upside down like a fuckin’ bat, hmm? Oh, we’re not such bad sorts here, huh Miles?
Showtime should pick it up.
June 7th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Josh…I think the guy working in the cultural industry, as you do, is the one projecting.
How many times have you been to jail or had your life and comrades’ lives threatened for your politics?
June 7th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
“unhip” “obscure” - you’re a 90s cliche.
June 7th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Natasha,
I have many of the same questions you have. I’m betting on something volcanic with Carmella because of the following guns laid on the table, that, it seems to me, have to be fired:
1. The unresolved Adrianna issue (Carm suspects even though she doesn’t wanna know)
2. The it’s-really-my-money, I-was-only-letting-you-play-at-house-building theme.
3. Christopher
4. Some threat to the kids that we have yet to see but that we’ve been ramping up to for the last two weeks
June 8th, 2007 at 9:42 am
David, on further review I think a “Dream” ending is possible. See the finale of “St Elsewhere” which was one of the best (and spookiest) of any series where the whole magilla is seen to be the interior dreams of one of the character’s autistic kid!
June 8th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Here is Cummings… coming out with his radical badge of honor.
Actually, my wife has been physically attacked twice (the second time just 2 weeks ago). So yes.
I am not “projecting.” I am reflecting upon my experience. Should I ignore my own observations? Should I not be shaped by the reality that I see from the producer side of things? Ignore my time around fans? Or would it be better to cling to some twisted pretend radicalism a la Stuart Hall. Look, if you find American Idol to be subversive, authentic, “peoples culture†- than so be it. I do not, because it is not.
But in case you have not noticed, the pop culture explosion and right wing insurgency have run parallel. Is that just dumb luck? I doubt it. If all of this “peoples†culture is subversive or radical, than why have we not had a revolution yet? Because all of this popular culture is a fucking distraction. Turn off the TV and go for a fucking bike ride. That would be more subversive than sitting around eating shitty food, making yourself sick watching a color box.
In regards to authenticity, you are making that argument. I cannot understand the “people†if I do not share their tastes in shitty entertainment. THAT is an authenticity argument. Just admit that you are a philistine, a charlatan, and get a job with an ad firm
June 8th, 2007 at 10:56 am
I’m not a Stu Hall fan. When I say mass culture, I’m not saying people’s culture, but to think that the Left shouldn’t pay any attention to what the masses enjoy is like saying we should just be a debating society.
Further, I like the Sopranos. I’m sure a critique could be laid from one angle or another of any of your aesthetic tastes, including the commerce of punk rock.
I don’t know why I rub you the wrong way. But I consider this conversation closed. Your “producer” side of things has made you bitter about your youthful idealism. Don’t take it out on me.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:58 am
And I have realized more and more you’re argungi with a straw man, against things I haven’t at all said, whether it be about American Idol or anything. You really need to quit selling punk rock records for a living.
June 8th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Maybe, Richard, you have a point about a possible dream sequence.. since this ending has been used numerous other times throughout the history of the little screen and big screen (Wizard of Oz, Neverending Story, other films I can’t remember offhand).
I never watched St. Elsewhere when it was on; I only started watching reruns of it a couple of years after it ended (It was on during my lunch hour on KSAS). I have to admit that I became somewhat hooked to the show, and I cannot even say why. Liked it much better than Dallas.
In the case of St. Elsewhere, I actually really liked using the autistic boy’s dream as an ending (well, framing, as it turned out) of the series. Again, I don’t know wny. It just seemed appropriate.
June 8th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Frankly, I would not be surprised to see HBO (or Showtime) launch another show with organized crime figures…only it will be not about the Italian mob, but the Irish mob. I work at Borders on weekends when I don’t teach (yeah, I know, it’s a questionable corporation but here in Wichita, Kansas we don’t have any big comprehensive indie book stores like in other big cities), and I can tell you from business in the store(s) and from looking at nationwide Borders best sellers, it is books about the Irish mob that have been among the biggest sellers in the true crime genre lately (specifically, books chronicling the interesting Whitey Bulger/FBI connection) I would imagine that a lot of the brisk Irish mob sales have to do with The Departed.
June 8th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
State of Grace would be a great template for an Irish mob show…
June 8th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Wasn’t “Brotherhood” which I saw once- it sucked- an Irish mob show?
June 8th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
David - people shouldn’t feel the need to justify where they work, under capitalism. I’ve worked - I do work from time to time - for big corporations. All money is the same, from independent hip bookstores (whcih pay worse often than “indie” shops) - to titans of industry. I like Borders when I’m in the States…only place to find obscure left wing magazines unavailable even at pleasant indy liberal bookstores.
June 8th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
You are right jcummings but even I will concede that the benefits at Borders are comparable to the ones offered at Wal Mart…paltry. At least I have decent insurance through my teaching,.. I know FULL time people who work at Borders who scrape to get by…and take it from me, Borders makes hand over fist. Check out Michael Moore’s The Big One for additional info (its pretty accurate).
June 8th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
But you are right, Borders has a decent selection of periodicals for a national chain. Plus, they are in the process of apparently upgrading their insurance policies somewaht.
June 8th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
And, you are two for two, j.c. I keyworded it and Brotherhood is a series on Showtime with the Irish Mob in it. From the description, it sounds like a slightly fictionalized account of the Bulger Brothers (one brother in the mob, the other a high ranking politician….in real life, Whitey’s brother was head of the Massachusetts legislature).
June 8th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
I don’t have Showtime, so I have never heard of it. From your description of Brotherhood, maybe there’s a reason why I haven’t heard of it.
And Reg, State of Grace is a very good film.
June 8th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Brotherhood started slow, but found its legs. It’s been picked up for a second season.
June 8th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
If all of this “peoples†culture is subversive or radical
And who the hell is saying it is? Just like not every goddam novel is subversive, or work of art, or household chore, or wiping of your ass, or essentially 99.99999% of the things human beings do, qua human beings. And thank sweet Jesus for that–how tiresome and juvenile. Christ, I never would’ve thought it was possible that someone could make jcummings look like a sensible, down-to-earth guy, but this poseur “Eat Your Television” undergraduate-level, just-took-polysci101 schtick has succeeded in doing just that.
June 10th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Brotherhood rocked - for those with an attention span greater than a gnat’s.
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